


Truth bleeds, time weeps

by LinneanSpora314



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinneanSpora314/pseuds/LinneanSpora314
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherever you look, whichever timeline you follow, things will never be the same again. The smell of fear and the sentiment of suspicion is in the air. No matter how fast you run, Time will catch up with you in the end.</p>
<p>We take up this story at this crucial turning point in the timeline, where Mason Bridge has just been murdered, Barry has come to realise that Wells is the Man in Yellow, the feline aka the secret-identity-of-the-Flash is also out of several bags… and traps and endgames are being concocted. The timeline itself may be universal, but each of our protagonists has a very different tale to tell…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't look back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry does not always enjoy running.

An empty street. Looking from above, a grid of streets, each as empty as the other, each as listless. Beneath a lonely street lamp, an empty crisp packet stirs on the pavement. The wind suddenly gathers force; the crisp packet is instantly airborne, preceded by a scarlet flash of light. 

You rub your eyes, you slow down time, and that flash was in fact a streak. Slow down time some more? Nay, not a streak, but a masked figure clad in a red suit. 

A human figure running, running away from something, running _angry_. 

North-east, north-west… for Barry Allen did not care in which direction he ran. The truth is, he was running to escape the truth, the truth of himself. 

Into his mind’s eye the raw image of Mason Bridge was freshly engraved, like some disturbing pyrographic art. That was when - when the seedlings of infection became a pandemic, and in his mind’s eye Dr Harrison Wells became the reverse flash. 

Or rather, it dawned on him at last, that the reverse flash was Dr Wells! That eerily ethereal, eternally loathed, Man-in-Yellow who since that fateful night had uprooted Barry’s life and taken up permanent residence in the fiery expanse of his memory, finally, finally had a human face. 

Only it was the last face he’d expected. 

“Behind those framed glasses, the steely gaze, and the piercing blue eyes was a contemptuous calculating genius”, or so Harrison Wells’ biography had described him. This much Barry had already known about his personal scientific idol. And yet in these months he had come to know him as so much more… A man who once had this brilliant vision - and the future of the human race in the palm of his hand, only to have it all blow up in front him, literally. Yet despite this overwhelming professional and personal tragedy this man would patiently continue with his craft, and persevere with his science. 

When he had first awoken from his coma, when he was lost and confused, Harrison Wells had reached out to him and given him an identity. This man, had morphed his meaningless, bitter existence into a heightened sense of purpose, and had given him a platform from which to practise his new-found power, to _help people_ , as he had always wanted to…

Over time, he had become his mentor, his partner… his friend, even.

And how could he turn on him like that, _in a flash_?

Poisonous, vengeful anger pounded through Barry’s chest like a human fist. Harder, and faster he ran, but he could not keep the thoughts of betrayal and of miscomprehension from enveloping him in a vast, suffocating flame of unresolved hatred. 

Between good and evil, friend or foe, there had been no finer line, and here he was, stumbling all over it.

Who else was in on this, was Cisco? or Caitlin? The very thought sent shivers through his vibrating spine.

But really, after the accelerator explosion why else did they stay with him when everybody else had left? 

Why had Cisco built the cold gun - a weapon designed for the specific purpose of taking him out?

How did the reverse flash escape from the trap, the trap that Cisco had engineered? He was smart wasn’t he, smart enough to be Wells’ right-hand man?

And Caitlin? How long had she been working for him? How could she possibly not know? No one, not even Wells, could keep a secret from such a close colleague for a decade. And, she is always drawing blood samples from him - what could they _possibly_ want with all that blood?

At that moment, his blood curdled in his capillaries. Temporally frozen in shock, Barry’s legs motored on at alarming pace, as if independent of mindful control. 

Barry could scarcely believe that he was capable of such menace, they were his friends - how could he possibly doubt them? Desperately, the part of Barry’s mind that was not yet angry flame tried its best to rationalise his conflicting loyalties. With every step, Barry pressed his feet harder still into the ground. 

From somewhere at the back of his head, a ringing endorsement sounded through the air.

“Breathe, Barry, breathe. Feel the ground. Feel your feet lifting you up… feel the lightning Barry. Feel its electricity pumping through your veins, crackling through you… like a shock!”

Faster and faster he ran; closer and closer the solid brick wall he was facing sped towards him.

Around him, molecules of matter began to resonate in thunderous harmony. 

Just as he was about to phase into the wall, the voice inside his head hissed: _“I'm always here for you Barry”._

The unwelcome distraction sent him careering head over heels into a pile of festering garbage. Before him, the memories, the faces, the friendships, and the reality that he had painstakingly constructed for himself, crumbled in a cascade of painful lies. 

(Almost) the fastest man alive, and the beautiful irony is, he could not outrun himself.


	2. Not looking back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harrison Wells is often alone with only his thoughts for company, that and Gideon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We shall continue to call our protagonist Harrison Wells, cos what kind of name is Eobard anyway!

He dug his hands deep into his pockets and pulled it out. The golden-yellow emblem shaped like a bolt of lightning glinted in the cold, artificial light of his secret lair. With irrepressible desire, with gentle fondness, he fingered the delicate metallic rim of his flash ring, and allowed himself the faintest of smiles. 

“It _is_ beautiful is it not, Dr Wells?” Said the soft soothing voice of the supercomputer who identifies herself as Gideon.

Harrison Wells looked up slowly at the angular, disembodied blue face of the A.I. projected onto the wall of his hideout. Her features, copper blue, and crystalline, had to him never looked more stunning, nor more _alive_. 15 years stranded in this backward, forsaken time, and she was his only companion, his only physical link to the only reality he had ever known… and his only way home. 

Interspersed daily in the time stream around him now were countless scurrying insets, swaying trees, needy children… and all those familiar faces - _they have all been dead for centuries_ , he reminded himself, save Gideon.

“Yes it is Gideon, yes it is!” Said Harrison, rolling his ring gently between thumb and forefinger. 

Suddenly something unpleasant snuck its way into his thoughts. He frowned, and bit his lower lip in quiet protestation. Only there was nothing for it - it had to be done. “Gideon, please add another name to the wall: Mason Bridge.”

“I will do so for you now, Dr Wells.” Replied Gideon, her face expressionless. 

Though her voice betrayed no judgement, Harrison could sense his own guilt, seeping through to the forefront of his consciousness.

“Oh i’m sorry… but it had to be so…” Harrison sighed, gazing mournfully beyond the fuzzy projection of his A.I. 

“I’m sure it had, Dr Wells.” Gideon replied, calmly as ever.

Though the brief silence that followed, spoke volumes. 

A gentle whirling noise grew from the silence. The intricate patterning adorning the walls parted to make way for some new additions, and the milky white of the paneling gave birth to yet more hemispherical protrusions… 

The peculiar globular shapes purposefully rearranged themselves - to the untrained eye, they were still nothing more than a random collection of dots, but to Harrison Wells, the dots spelt out one name:

“Mason Bridge.”

If truth be told, he never did much like the man. He came across as rather forthright, arrogant and contemptuous, but yet admittedly he was good at his job, _too good in fact._

Still though, one must not speak ill of the dead. 

Harrison closed his eyes, and reflected upon the vacuousness of the statement. _They have all been dead for centuries_. 

When he opened them again he could not help but read the other names on the wall, “Jake Davenport. Daria Kim. Ralph Dibny. Will Everett. Al Rothstein”…. he froze at the name “Nora Allen.”

He was sorry she had to die, for it had not been his intent. Perhaps destiny had other ideas though. , he mused to himself. Not that Barry would believe a word of that. Not that Barry heeded anything he said these days. 

“Gideon, show me where Barry is now.” He instructed his supercomputer.

Instantly a grid map appeared on the wall - a single flashing pixel flitting back and forth across a maze of empty streets. The pixel was moving at extraordinary speed, perhaps more than 800 miles per hour according to his monitor, but fluctuating wildly. 

Harrison knew what that meant of course - the Flash was angry, no not just angry, he was positively furious. 

Furious with what, Harrison wondered, or furious with _whom_?

For days prior, he had attributed Barry’s crankiness to a lack of sleep, exhaustion, and that recent events had made the painful memories of that fateful night resurface. Only now there seems to be more. 

Cautiously he removed his glasses, and inched closer to the monitor to scrutinise Barry’s vitals - the fluctuating brain activity would seem to indicate overwhelming feelings of confusion, and hatred. Does he suspect? How could he possibly know? 

Perhaps, in his brief encounter with that alternate timeline, he had seen something he shouldn’t have?

No matter, there was no turning back now. Not 15 years ago, and certainly not now. He is so close…

And he was so close.

As close as he was to the car as he watched it rear upwards high into the obscurity of the night sky, with driver and passenger still inside. 

With a jolt, he remembered being at the wheel, the grip of soft leather in his hands, his Tess by his side - her scent of fragrant snowdrops and a dewy morn, and the last time he felt whole. He remembered the deafening terror as the car overturned, the wordless internalised screaming as he sped ever faster toward his doom. Then, an all-consuming abyss. And no more. When he opened his eyes again he could see only her golden hair, and the viscous drops of blood, trickle down by the side of her face, and a pair of dark brown boots.

Then the boots were back on his own feet. 

And there down by his feet lay the dishevelled remains of the man formerly known as Harrison Wells. 

For the memories of that man whose identity he stole, were his final parting gift.

A beautiful, simmering, illogical, yet mutable thing, was memory - he relented. In his mind he had to witness her death many times over, too many times.

While Harrison battled his conscience thus, Gideon was busy _observing_ him.

Having the names of all those unfortunate souls who had been sacrificed for the sake of one’s endgame engraved into the walls of one’s cell seemed to Gideon rather like a gesture of an outright masochist.

But then again, what would she know about human nature.


	3. Looking back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Henry Allen can see the light beyond the grey walls of his prison cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine the pain of a father, who had lost his wife, his freedom, and the chance to hug his son on his birthday - and on all his birthdays hence... 
> 
> How did Henry Allen ever cope?

Four blank faces of wall. Henry Allen looked up and realised he had forgotten to count the ceiling. He heard the iron door behind him clamp shut with a determined bang, which reverberated down the lonely expanse of the prison corridors. 

He was back in his cell once more. Alone. His pitiful existence defined solely by four walls and a ceiling. 

In an odd, perverted kind of way, Henry Allen had to admit that being captured by the psychotic father-son duo who went by the name of The Trickster was the most exhilarating thing that had happened to him in years. Though he was cuffed, manhandled, and threatened at gunpoint, for what it was worth he revelled in the freedom. To have rediscovered that putrid smell of petrol in the air, the epileptic flashing lights of Central City, the musty whiff of old carpet ascending from beneath his feet… !

He was relieved that the world, could still move him yet.

Fifteen years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, fifteen years in solitary confinement, was enough to change a man, enough perhaps to neuter his capacity for all emotion.

No sooner had he felt aroused by these vivid long-forgotten sensations, was he back in here again, facing the same damn expressionless walls, and sniffing the oppressive scent of cheap disinfectant and captivity. 

In all this time there was one emotion that would continue to burn inside him.

It was not an outpouring of anger, nor was it an appetite for revenge - for that had long ago died with Nora. For as long as this fistful of muscle inside his chest continued to pulse, he would feel the relentless outpouring of love of a father for his son. That pure, indescribable tingle when the boy first gazed up into his father’s eyes was unlike anything he had ever felt before or hence.

For several months he and Nora had charted Barry’s progress anxiously. All the children of his age were already walking or at the very least toddling around on their chubby hind legs, and here was their child, still sat on the kitchen linoleum, sucking on whatever he had just forensically extracted from between the floor tiles.

Desperately they had devoured their way through half a dozen self-help books, with preemptive titles such as “first steps to success”, and “how to train your baby in three easy steps”. Stubborn as he was, even back then, Barry would always prefer to sink slowly back down to a giggling heap on the floor than to strut around as evolution had for millennia demanded of Man.

Then finally one day he was crawling around on all fours in the garden when Nora called out to him. In a flash he pulled himself up and _ran_ towards the general direction of the kitchen. His mother met him halfway, and swooped him up screaming ecstatically: “good boy Barry! Good boy!”

But Nora Allen was dead, a single stab wound to the chest and Henry had witnessed her death. 

And suddenly the little boy became a man. 

But Henry Allen never did see him grow up.

Nearly a week after that terrible night he was rummaging around in kitchen in a semi-comatose state, for something edible, anything at all. Barry was safe with Joe and Iris and once again he was left alone in the house. He found some boxes packed away discretely at the back of the freezer and pulled them out - individual ready meals for two, each box neatly labelled in Nora’s own handwriting. _"Wednesday: Ginger and chilli chicken tagine”, “Thursday: Tomato, Feta and Spinach Quiche”, “Friday: …”_

Henry could not make out the rest of the words, for the tears and the emotion that bled from him made that impossible. Nora must have prepared those before she was due to depart later that week for a friend’s wedding in England, knowing the incompetent cook that he was. Only then had it occurred to him that she was really gone. He clasped his head in his hands, and weeped uncontrollably until the salt wrinkled his eyelids and the first light of dawn broke through the clouds. 

The wedding still happened of course. That was somebody else’s timeline, and this was his.

Over the years he became accustomed to Barry’s phone calls, and whenever they were allowed - the brief visits and the strained silence across a frosty pane of glass. Those bursts of life and light were all he had to cling to, all he could hope for and could realistically get. 

The voice would grow stronger, deeper, and the shoulders broader. The familiar face on the other side of the glass would always assure him: “I’ll get you out Dad, I’ll do everything in my power to get you out…”

He would nod tearfully and smile, and die a little more inside. _There’s no power on earth Barry…_

Those nine months in which Barry was in a coma, were the worst of his hell. 

Looking back, he did not know how he had lived through it all. The trial, the conviction, having to observe the world pass him by through the chinks in the clunky iron gates that would contain his future. 

_Perhaps no power on earth, but my son… he is the Flash._

He could barely contain his delight.

He had suspected this for months, but finally his boy had enough courage to admit as much to his old man. 

“Good on yer, Slugger. You always did look good in red.” He allowed himself a low chuckle.

Behind the newfound hope and the bursting pride - at the back of his mind, Henry wondered if losing his mother, and having his father thrown in jail for the crime had been the making of him, had been what strengthened his resolve, defined his identity, given him that direction towards which he ran.

Tomorrow will dawn another day. Somewhere out there, Henry knew that his son would be running. _Run Barry, run!_

_Through you, I can almost taste that freedom again!_

A small black spider dangled its web in the vicinity of his face. A single feeble stand of trust was all it had between the anchor on the ceiling and certain doom.

He stopped short of swotting it away. Gratefully, the tiny creature hugged itself with its spindly legs, and continued its descent. Just another life, doing its best to survive, that’s all.


	4. Looking for answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harrison Wells was hiding something all along, Joe is sure of it.

The hazy glow of the orange sodium lamp on the ceiling expanded spherically to fill the study. Det. Joe West sat as he often did in the evenings at his desk by the large bay window, brooding over facts and lies. This particular case has been cursed with more lies than usual - and fifteen years later the curse has still not been lifted. He pulled the stripy beanie cap from his head and ran his palm across his glossy forehead. Straining his eyes — bloodshot with frustration, he stared intently down at the brainstorm of paperwork sprayed before him. _Fifteen bloody years._

And for fourteen and half of those he had erred. 

Slowly he moved over to examine the drawn curtains; finding a corner of naked window pane from which the artificial orange light from the room could escape out there into the nethersphere of the night, he tugged obsessively at the frayed fabric until the defect was gone. It was not so much the leakage of photons out of the room that he feared the most, but rather the possibility of being _observed_ by prying eyes — prying demon-red eyes glowing outwith a yellow suit. He shuddered at the thought.

“There was another man there that night, and a flash of lightning…” the small terrified boy had told him over and over again between heart-wrenching floods of tears. “Why won’t you believe me Joe? Why won’t anyone believe me?” 

_Oh Barry my boy_ , there was another man that night. Joe gets it now. It has only taken him what, fourteen and a half years.

He hoped Barry would forgive him, heck he hoped Henry would too. Even though they probably already have, Joe could not bring himself to forgive himself.

How could he? How could he have doubted them? One a friend of decades, and the other a small innocent child who had just had his world turned upside-down, inside-out, and extruded through a fine shredder — it was their word against Evidence. 

No one else was spotted at the crime scene, and then there was Henry Allen covered in that blood, all her blood… 

There were only two options available to him: a small child who saw strangers borne on red and yellow streaks of lightning, or said small child’s mind was attempting to rationalise unimaginable trauma with irrational fiction. Which would he have to believe? Which would the laws of the land the jury and the court of law have to believe?

Joe knew that his instincts, which he had purposefully kept hidden and suppressed at the back of his conscience, would much rather have believed the innocence of his friend, and would rather have kept faith in the sanctity of the testimony of a child.

But Joe the seasoned detective, had yet greater faith in the cruel, logic of uncompromising fact.

That was until he saw a man control the weather. That was before Barry whipped up a frenzy of dust and running and improbable speed before his very eyes. 

Suddenly for Joe in that instant, the embers of the memories from that night fifteen years ago came alive and that small child in the red jumper who between gulps of tears and gasps of air was spewing forth unlikely tales of light and lightning was telling the truth all along.

These days Joe had little trouble believing in the impossible. 

And the impossible seemed to all have something to do with one man.

Accusingly he looked down at the large monochromatic print of the inscrutable yet familiar face that he had peeled off his copy of Harrison Wells’ biography.

_Evidence._

Throughout his career, Joe had thrived on the stuff. Only this time he had none. On a night such as today several months ago the reverse flash had swept into his living room in a dazzling blur of light just as Barry had foretold, and took away every trace of evidence he had, and ripped a dagger through Iris’s name and by association through poor Joe’s heart. 

But if Wells was patient, then Joe would be stubborn by an equal measure. 

He would reassemble proof anew, even if it means biding his time.

Only Joe could not be sure what exactly he was trying to prove; for an uncomfortable trust was jarring apart his impeccable logic. The grey matter inside his brain scrambled desperately to fabricate an explanation.

He rummaged through the sheaves of paper on his desk. _Harrison Well’s medical notes._ For the umpteenth time Joe scrutinised the practised hand of the consultant who had made the initial diagnosis. The prognosis was clear, the writing black and white, the _“patient had suffered severe trauma to his head and chest, and lacerations to his back and torso… will most likely suffer from permanent paralysis and long-term neurological damage”_.

As if that wasn’t enough Joe recalled that on one of his visits once, not long after they had had Barry (who was of course still in a coma) transferred to S.T.A.R labs, he had spotted Wells loitering around the flashing controls. He was still in a body cast at that point, his face scarred and ashen, and pain and discomfort etched into his sunken eyes every time he attempted to navigate his wheelchair around the wheezing hospital apparatus Barry was smothered in. And all the while Caitlin Snow —who had by then taken it upon herself to be his acting personal physician — was observing his every movement like a hawk.

_But it can’t be him, his DNA sample did not match the blood stain on the wall._

_Of course it is not him, how could he possibly run if he can’t even walk??_

Yet somehow Joe was as sure of Dr Wells’ guilt as he was about Barry being destined for greatness. He turned out to be right didn’t he, about the second thing?

As he watched this kid, his kid, grow up side by side with Iris Joe had always felt Barry was different from the other children. Yes he was always caring, generous, and feverishly perceptive, there was something else. That feeling would only intensify with Barry’s determination to prove his father’s innocence and avenge the death of his mother. Perhaps it was not the lightning strike that had sealed his destiny but the events of that night fifteen years ago - almost as if something, or someone, had willed it to happen. 

He stared back at the photograph on the table and the blue eyes behind the dark rimmed glasses peered at him menacingly. Joe could feel the guilt leaping forth from the page.

Then there were the coroner’s reports on Tess Morgan to consider. 

_He needed more proof! And he was darned if he wasn’t gonna get it._

They would have to be patient though, Wells cannot be confronted, Wells must not suspect, this much he had already advised Barry when the boy came to him all flustered and angry and demanding answers. A super-, nay, meta- human effort was what it took for Joe to restrain his suffocating anger and wield his decades of experience and calm to the fore. 

The venus flytrap secretes its sweet seducing nectar, and every good trap would need a good bait. Never before with such clarity could Joe see his objective now. Wells is guilty, he just _knows_. Meanwhile, the two-dimensional monochromatic face of Harrison Wells stared intently back at him, _you don’t know anything yet_ , he seemed mouth. 

Dr Tina McGee, Joe decides, he’ll have to pay her a personal visit in the morning.

This time, Joe vowed, he would trust only his instincts.


	5. Look no further

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dank interiors of the dungeon in which he is being held captive, Eddie comes to a decision. Time and time again he had wondered, why had the RF chosen to spare his life.

In his dream Eddie was running. Only, it was not so much a dream as a nightmare from which he could not shake himself awake, and a nightmare in which he could not run. As fast as he could actuate the rhythm of his lower limbs, he could not escape from his surroundings, and the rows of scaly trees lining the streets seemed to be encroaching on him in an ever more predatory manner.

In his dream, a scarlet pinpoint of light someway ahead of him was shouting back: “C’mon Eddie, why are you sooooo slow!” 

Yes why was he so slow?? The innumerable times he had had to play the unenviable part of second fiddle when Barry was present… and the way Iris used to cling on to Barry’s elbow as the inseparable duo cried themselves silly with vacuous laughter. 

For all his supposedly superior powers of reasoning and deduction, why did he not realize earlier that Iris could never truly be his? Or perhaps he did, but his even more superior powers of self-denial, and the sustenance of hope, was enough to convince himself that it would be otherwise.

_A boring and ordinary detective, an utterly undistinguished life, is how he would be remembered by all of history._

That much Wells had already told him, spoilers from the future if you will, or at the very least, some version of the future…

He gazed helplessly in the direction of Barry and the ever-lengthening distance of track that separated them. Somewhere to his right a pungent whiff of burnt fat and sizzling oil drifted by, penetrating deep into his nostrils…

********

Eddie awoke from his drug-induced stupor with a jolt. He rubbed his tired eyes and blinked several times in an effort to readjust to the erratic illumination of the dungeon in which he was being held captive. That was when he realised that his hands had been untied, and that the man formerly known as Harrison Wells was sat directly opposite him, munching on the dismembered remnants of a chicken leg. In the frosty metallic lighting of their hideout, Wells’ uncharacteristically wild shock of black hair appeared to assume a life of its own.

Eddie looked up incredulously at Wells, or Eobard, or whoever he claims his is, and tried to resist the temptation of the steaming tray of food that had just been shoved under his nose. 

“Well, eat, Mr Thawne, eat! For I have no use of a dead hostage.” His captor and Central City’s greatest nemesis declared. 

Eddie glanced up at him incredulously, _better to be staring into the face of inscrutable evil than at the food._ He felt his body, and in particular his stomach, quiver with vigorous protestation.

“They were out of Thai food, so I figured this would do the trick.” The good doctor continued, prolonging the one-way conversation. 

The discomfort, just like the conversation, was heavily one-sided. Eddie felt himself squirm, and sink further into the chair to which his ankles were still chained. Though they were staring at each other, Eddie was undoubtedly the one who was being observed, and whose menial and meaningless existence was being judged.

“You won’t get away with this!” He insisted bravely. “They’ll find me, and soon you’ll be locked up behind the bars of your own prison…” Eddie felt his own voice fizzle out with a whimper, together with his conviction. 

Given the reaction on the part of his captor, or rather the lack thereof, Eddie wondered if he had been heard at all. 

 

“You know all those black and white movies you lot always seem to enjoy so much? A reminder of times gone by?” Eobard was saying between mouthfuls of fries, half-addressing the air. 

“Well, that’s what it’s like for me, in this life, observing you in action - your antiquated ways, smothered in such… monochromaticity.” He added, savouring each syllable, and jerking his head with the knowing smirk of a man who happened to be perfectly justified in his perception of his own self-worth. 

The sorry sight of Eddie at that moment must have strengthened this aspect of Eobard’s perception: for before him was a weary, dishevelled man with blood-shot eyes, a prisoner no less, with lips half-parted in a perpetual state of suspended stupor, and who, _does not even get the girl_.

In actual fact, Eddie was thinking; in spite of the haze and the gnawing headache his brain was churning out one thought that would simultaneously excite and alarm him to equal measure. If Eobard Thawne was truly his descendent, then what would happen if he died? _Would Eobard then cease to exist?_

From his vantage point of captivity Eddie watched Wells lick the salt sequentially from the tips of his thumb and forefinger. 

At least Iris would remember him for his noble sacrifice, he thought as his eyes darted desperately around the room in search of the crude firearm that no doubt his captor had confiscated from him… 

_At least then he would be remembered._


End file.
